Chromebooks: What Are They and Why They Are Awesome

Chromebooks are the laptops that have the components of computers and the operating system made of an Internet browser. What? Yeah, the Chromebook line of computers, which are famous for having an affordable price point that allows anyone with a marginal amount of money to get a full computer experience. The basic Chromebook can word process, manage spreadsheets, create presentations/slide shows, manage files on your Drive, and use Gmail freely. But the issue is, for many people that travel a lot, is what can they do offline, without a connection to Google?

Quite a bit. Actually, the whole list of things from just a moment ago. You can manage files on your Google Drive, and make changes to them, which get applied to the documents themselves upon your next Internet connection. All you have to do is enable offline editing in Drive while connected and online, then you can Drive now and sync later. The document editors in Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, are also available wholly offline, and when you connect up to the Internet, the files go up to Drive with ease, and if need to manage email, you can do that too.

Gmail is one of the most popular email services, and is obviously of interest to people with Chromebooks. Gmail can be used and interacted with entirely offline, with some limits. You can obviously not send or receive emails (since that requires a connection to the Internet), but you can set emails to send when next connected, as well as interact with all, yes every one, of your emails in your Gmail inbox (or inboxes, if you have multiple accounts set up) and as with Drive, you just need to enable offline access before disconnecting to make that flight or get on the road before traffic has time to kick in.

But what is the deal? Why are Chromebooks? Why do they exist and what as? Well, they are receptacles and access points. A Chromebook gives you literal direct access to the Internet and Google Chrome, and offers the capability to keep some of your data and content for your use. The biggest bonus is that you can have all the core features, the reasons and functions you bought a Chromebook for, and only a few (like calendar, Chrome itself, the connection of Gmail, and the streaming of not already downloaded media) drawbacks within a Chromebook. Chromebooks: the access point and receptacle that can come with you and take some of your stuff online, just offline.